The sum of lifetime exposures to nongenetic drivers of health and illness, from conception to death, is called the exposome.17 The exposome encompasses chemical, social, psychological, ecological, historical, political, and biological elements

viruses can bring about adaptive biological change. They are estimated to cause almost 30 percent of the adaptations in proteins that humans have in common with other mammals.113

This close relationship between aging and inflammation has led to the clever neologism “inflamm-aging.”

Inflammation is a biological, social, economic, and ecological pathway, all of which intersect, and whose contours were made by the modern world.

Metchnikoff’s seminal research identified what we now call the innate immune system, which reacts immediately to ancient molecular patterns that signal damage or infection. Inflammation and phagocytes are part of this first-responder branch. There are several immune cells that engulf things, but the hungry phagocyte that captured Metchnikoff’s imag

Inflammation is triggered when tissues and cells are damaged or threatened with damage. A complex and intricately coordinated response of the immune system, inflammation mobilizes resources to ultimately heal what has been injured. In a healthy, balanced system, once the mending has occurred, inflammation subsides. When the damage keeps coming, the

The innate immune system has also developed ways of recognizing organisms, through pathogen-associated molecular patterns. That memory is instilled before birth and transmitted across generations. In other words, the innate immune system serves as a community resource. Having built up recognition mechanisms over eons, it establishes a transgenerati

that determine whether aging cells will become drivers of chronic systemic inflammation.18

the immune response “is called into action by alarm signals from injured tissues, rather than by the recognition of nonself.”